UK - iPhone Users Get iPlayer Beta

In what is undoubtedly a well planned move on behalf of the BBC, iPhone users are being offered a beta for the BBC iPlayer application. TUAW reports that a limited selection of shows from the iPlayer has already been made available to UK iPhone owners, while this has nothing to do with the release of the SDK, nor was it made possible through software updates to the iPhone.

It is, however, a predictable move on behalf of the British broadcaster, with the SDK beta finally being released, garnering more attention than ever over the iPhone. As such, British iPhone users will be able to download a bunch of programs via Apple's digital store (iTunes). Apple and BBC have struck a deal, announced this week in a Yahoo news report.

The BBC aims to secure the broadest possible distribution for its content, while Apple and its devices are the closest thing to achieving that. iPlayer allows viewers to watch older programs, as long as at least one week will have passed since its initial airing.

Programs like Life On Mars, Little Britain and Spooks, are to become available in Britain for purchase and download from the iTunes Store, BBC Worldwide said, when talking of included programs. Priced at 1.89 pounds ($3.69) per episode, programs will then be viewable for PC, Mac, video iPod, iPhone or Apple TV owners, in what is the first deal of its kind for Apple and a UK broadcaster.

The BBC's General Director, Mark Thompson, wrote a while ago in a blog entry that there was a lot of criticism for a lack of Mac and Linux compatibility, all this while a lot of positive feedback was also received, ever since iPlayer had been officially launched on Christmas.

"Contrary to what some believe - the BBC actually works hard to provide internet services on a 'platform agnostic' basis. However, the issue of download of programmes to Mac and other platforms has always been a more complex issue for technical and rights reasons," webuser.co.uk quotes Thompson.

Naturally, some issues concerned protecting content from being copied and redistributed illegally. The BBC has overcome those issues and could confirm the upcoming availability of a Mac-compatible download application during the course of this year.

Explaining why the BBC chose to launch a beta version of the app only for Windows at first, Thompson revealed that "at the time of the development of the BBC iPlayer, the BBC was forced to choose between offering the service to a majority of users immediately - or to not offer catchup TV over the internet until full platform neutrality could be achieved." As such, the broadcasting corporation "chose to begin by serving the greatest number of licence-fee payers possible, and to follow up on that work to extend the service to other operating systems at the earliest opportunity," according to the same man.

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